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I am wondering if anyone else has faced chess burnout. Do you have advice? I am a novice enthusiast (~1400) but, with a wife, child, and job, do not have the opportunity to dedicate as much time to it as I would have in my youth. Because of this I have mostly been playing correspondence chess online, which I am sure is contributing to burnout. Being tied to 50+ games at once against fairly faceless opponents is not conducive to passion for the game I am sure.

Some ideas I have had:

Play more OTB and find better live opponents. I always enjoy the game more and play better when it is personal, like a dance or a good conversation. I have found clubs intimidating but I think at this point I need to bite the bullet and go for it... at my level I am by no means good but I definitely have trouble finding challenges against casual players.

Teach (what little I know). Generally speaking, pouring into others helps motivate and inspire the teacher as well. Maybe I should start a chess club at the local library? (Just to be clear, I have no delusions of grandeur with my measly 1400 but one can always teach basics or facilitate, right?)

Have any of you successfully dealt with burnout? What were your experiences and what would your advice be?

It sounds like you simply crave some human contact in chess, and that is understandable, oh, and much more fun.

Starting a club, or getting involved in state chess "politics" is certainly one way, but it is a much bigger undertaking with more responsibility. Think hard about this commitment before you do this.

Helping kids at a school, possibly your child's school, is another. If you do attempt to teach, focus on the rules and basic tactics, which you can get straight out of a book. Give them a few puzzles each week, but go through them yourself first before you go over them with the kids. If you have any questions about certain avenues of defense for a particular problem, then you can go over it with Stockfish first so you are ready to answer their questions. You can also see if some local Master would come in and give a talk, play a few games, or give a simul. I have done this quite a few times over the years just because I like kids, and thus, did it for free.

Another think that came to my mind first, and that is go to a club, and make friends with someone, who is close in rating, and invite each other over to your homes, and play for a few hours (or all night...I did that a lot when I was first learning) every week, or couple of weeks.

I would finish the correspondence games, and get away from that. When i started playing in 1980, correspondence was still chess. Now, it is who is better with a computer program. I can see why you do not find much fun in that.

Playing tournaments is also a way to meet up with people, who you will see many times over the years.

Good luck, and let us know what you decide to do.

P.S. You could also take lessons yourself as that would also fit the bill.

I experienced burnout once from too many correspondence games and I chose to limit my correspondence games to only 10 games, 5 per server that I play on as the max that I would start. I only play on 2 servers. For me, it really helped.

I have a growing family, a full time job and like we all have, the realities of life going. Not a lot of time to really dedicate to developing my game as much as I would like or get to the chess clubs as much as I would like.

Keeping my expectations to be based on the input that I can realistically give to developing my game helped me out mentally as well. I can't expect monumental results in my development in chess when my top priorities are not chess. I also plan on trying to get to the chess clubs and just keep track of local tournaments so if the opportunity for me comes that I can play I know where and when the tournaments are.

Also for me, some of my hobbies help. I'm a programmer enthusiast(novice-beginner) and I'm making my own database, data processing program for pgn files so if I'm feeling a little burnt out I can redirect my attention to the programming stuff for a bit. Seems to help me so maybe if you have a hobby, chess related or not, you can throttle time between them.

Hope however you chose to deal with your issue works out the best!